1821 - 1893

Sculptor and watercolourist, born at Carrara. He gained a gold medal at the Carrara Academy and later was awarded a scholarship to Rome. He aligned himself politically with Garibaldi and came to England as an exile in 1848. Subsequently he became a naturalised British citizen and remained here for the rest of his life. He exhibited in London from 1852 to 1886, notably at the RA and the New Watercolour Society. Fontana was commissioned to produce statues of two Liverpool worthies, Joseph Mayer(1869) and Samuel Robert Graves (1875) for the Great Hall of st George’s Hall. He also received commissions from the Governments of Sydney and New South Wales. He made four caryatids representing The Seasons for the staircase of the millionaire mansion built in Kensington by the architect James Knowles for Baron Albert Grant, and, in 1874, made the copy of Peter Scheemakers’s statue of Shakespeare, forming part of Knowles’s fountain, in the new Leicester Square layout presented by Baron Grant to the Metropolitan Board of works. A number of Fontana’s portraits and ideal works are in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery.